The Supreme Court has said rapid changes in modern life have made what constitutes ‘cruelty’ in marriage fluid.
A judgment by a Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and M.M. Sundresh noted that the boundaries of what constitutes cruel conduct in marriages shifts depending on human behaviour, capacity or incapability to tolerate the conduct complained of, etc.
The court was hearing an appeal for a decree of divorce for a couple who have been living separately for over a decade. The wife, represented by advocate Dushyant Parashar, accused her husband of pathologically suspicious conduct while the man said the woman was in an adulterous relationship leading to the birth of a child. Each had accused the other of cruelty.
